Reviews, musings, commentaries…

The Frighteners

This was another film I originally saw when I was quite young and remembered really enjoying it. My sister remembered watching it when she was quite young, too, so we decided to watch it together this evening.

Although this film is clearly quite dated, it’s still quite an entertaining one to watch… but although it starts off as quite lighthearted (with a conman who really can see ghosts), it quickly grows more serious as the film goes on and there are some really scary scenes in this.

There’s not a lot that’s very complicated in this film. There’s little explanation for why the bad guys are bad. I can’t remember if I was very surprised by the twists when I originally watched this, but watching it again, I did know what was coming.

The appearances of the ghosts was an interesting one, as was the idea of the ectoplasm eventually drying up. I would have liked a bit more explanation about how all of that worked.

There were some things in this film that were quite confusing and weird… particularly with the special agent. I couldn’t quite figure out if he was meant to be a good guy or a bad one. It was a bit amusing to see a graveyard policed by its very own ghost that was in charge.

This film did seem to be a whole redemption arc for the main character. He might have been a conman, but he was still quite a likable character and his interactions with the ghosts were fairly amusing.

The ending to this film was good, but a little bit confusing. Still, this is a film I’d probably be happy to watch again. I don’t think it should be rated as low as a twelve, though. There were some really scary and graphic scenes that I wouldn’t be comfortable letting younger, more sensitive children watch.